Why Banks Must Become Smart Aggregators in the Financial Services Digital Ecosystem

whitePaper | March 24, 2023

Experts agree that the metaverse, from both a technological and also a business perspective, still has a long way to go before reaching its full potential. Some sources, including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg himself, estimate that it will take a minimum of ten years before his promise will be fulfilled. According to Gartner, only one in four people will spend an average of one hour per day in the metaverse by 2025 and only 30% of companies will have products or services ready for this new space.

whitePaper | July 29, 2022

Would you like to be able to aggregate your data across your bank accounts? Enable your tax accountant to see your financial information? Enable the App of your choice to make a payment on your behalf? Or perhaps you would like to enable your residents or customers to perform these tasks in a low cost, secure and interoperable way? There is a global movement towards “Open Banking/Open Data” the paradigm shift where a user authorizes the release of their data from one entity (a data holder like a bank) to an entity where they would like it to go (a relying party like a FinTech). This is also known as “user-consent based data sharing.” Although this movement started with banking use cases and gaining access to data held by banks, it is now expanding to a range of other verticals including brokerage and mutual fund services, insurance, telecommunications, utilities, health and more.

whitePaper | October 21, 2021

Some might say Video Banking is already a "next-generation" technology, and in many ways it is. But even though using video to provide face-to-face communication with remote experts is a welcome addition to online banking, most deployments to date add little more than a trust element. We can still find much room to further improve the customer experience as it relates to video and digital banking, as we will demonstrate in this paper. Video Banking is a remote one-way or two-way connection between you and a bank representative working in a call center, branch office, or from home. There are several use cases for Video Banking, depending upon your location and need. A common Video Banking model is the Personal Teller Machine (PTM),calso called a Video Teller Machine (VTM). A PTM functions like ancautomated teller machine (ATM) outfitted with a built-in monitor, camera, microphone, and speakers to facilitate video interactions. That allows a connection with a remote banker to answer questions about transactions when you need help. PTMs often have the convenience of 24-hour service with remote bankers on a shift-based roster to cover the customer load.

whitePaper | August 25, 2022

This paper studies the economics behind the investment in information technologies (IT) by U.S. commercial banks in the past decade. By linking banks’, IT spending to their lending technologies, we analyze the distinctive natures of banks’ dealings with information across various lending activities. Investment in communication IT is shown to be associated more with improving banks’ ability of soft information production and transmission, while investment in software IT helps enhance banks’ hard information processing capacity. We exploit polices that affect geographic regions differentially to show causally that banks respond to an increased demand for small business credit (mortgage refinance) by increasing their spending on communication (software) IT spending. We also find that the entry of fintech induces commercial banks to increase their investment in IT—more so in the software IT category.

whitePaper | July 3, 2022

Founded in 1896, Barclays is among the world's oldest banks and enjoys the patronage of some of Europe's most profitable corporations. In 2021, Barclays claimed over 48 million customers, amassed over its 120+ year history. On the other hand, Revolut is a UK neobank that has acquired over 15 million account holders in less than a decade since its founding. These numbers are illustrative of a larger shift in the global banking system, with agile, digitally empowered financial service providers making inroads into mainstream banking territory. Currently, traditional banks, with their large product and service portfolios and legions of loyal customers, still hold the lion's share of the European banking market.

whitePaper | November 5, 2019

Trade finance in its simplest form is when an exporter requires an importer to prepay for goods shipped. This gives the importer two main challenges. The first is that prepaying for goods from places such as China or India, for example, will seriously impact the company’s cash flow due to the long shipping times involved. The second challenge is how does the importer reduce the risks of paying for goods in advance? These two challenges are mainly resolved by the importer’s bank or independent trade finance provider providing a letter of credit to the exporter, or the exporter’s bank, guaranteeing payment upon presentation of certain documents. These documents may include a bill of lading.